Open Road
On The Road
19/02/09 09:04 Post: Personal Work
Taken at 02:33pm in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire. UK. Monday 9th February 2009.
The title and content of today’s blog post are inspired by one of my favourite literary works; Jack Kerouac’s largely autobiographical book On The Road. The book is based upon Kerouac’s own journeys across America with his friends in the late 1940’s and is written in a style he called ‘spontaneous prose’ (which is similar to the ‘stream of consciousness’ method of writing). Kerouac wrote On The Road in just three weeks during a creative literary explosion in April 1951 and is now widely acknowledged as an American Modern Classic.
“It changed my life like it changed everyone else’s” - Bob Dylan (speaking about reading On The Road)
The narrative and characters are throughly engaging and compelling, yet it’s Kerouac’s approach and expressive literary style that has come to inspire me in my own creative practice. His writings manage to instil a sense of adventure and willingness to break both physical and metaphysical boundaries in the quest for original and fulfilling life experiences. On The Road was inspired by many things that Kerouac was passionate and immersed in at the time (jazz, poetry and travel to name but a few) and reading the book has certainly played its part in confirming the need to draw upon my personal passions in order to satisfy my creative inclinations when producing photographic work. A spontaneous and organic nature to producing work has long been the driving force behind the photographs that I take and reading On The Road has re-ignited my belief that its also a great approach for living life in general.
"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars." - taken from Jack Kerouac’s On The Road.
Technical Information
Camera: Canon EOS 40D Digital SLR
Lens: Canon EF-S 17mm - 85mm IS USM
ISO: 200
Focal Length: 24mm
Shutter Speed: 1/125th sec
F-Stop: f/10
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